RSCM Report: Part Two

For we are laborers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building… But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any many build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. (I Corinthians 3:9-13)

I have often called upon this passage as a plumb line for my work, properly so. But much of our work is together, including choral work. There is enough music of the wood, hay, and stubble variety in the world; how can we as a group build with gold, silver, and precious stones? We who ourselves are dust and ashes, individually and together?

We can rehearse. We can build our skill level in various ways: lessons, scales and exercises, study. We can indeed become extremely good, like that semiprofessional choir on the eve of the Course. And we may find that for all our perfection we are “as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” (I Cor. 13:1) For “if I have not charity, I am nothing” (v. 2).

It has something to do with what I call Connection, following my teacher Dr. Flummerfelt. Some others, including one of the composers we sang this week, call it Attitude:

When singing, are you connected to the text and musical line with all of your being? Or are you going through the motions? It might be possible for instrumentalists to sometimes get away with the latter, but the voice is so thoroughly a window into the soul that it is immediately obvious if the singers are not Connected -- and, if the other basics are in place and the group has done its homework, Connection makes it possible for the song to touch the hearts of the listeners. This will never happen if the hearts of the singers are not likewise touched by the Song and absolutely committed to it. [from RSCM Report 2015]

But it also has to do with brokenness.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. (II Corinthians 4:7-10)

A perfect singer, confident in her ability, not a trouble in the world, will not have this treasure. There are not enough cracks for the light to shine through. Those who are carrying health issues, personal or family burdens, a broken heart, those who are derided and ostracized by their peers, or hungry and tired, without money for food and shelter – their song has the potential to become gold, silver, precious stones.

But not in their own strength. Not at all; if you ask such a singer if they are doing well, they will probably sigh and say “I wish! I am not any good at all. Everything I do is wrong, my best efforts are incomplete.”

The Swedish poet Karin Boye gives part of the answer, in an evening prayer we sang during the Course, set to music by Egil Hovland:

… for I know that you can finish what I found of joy or sorrow. All my harmful thoughts and actions, heal and make them new and wholesome. Take my days and make them over. Come, transform their dust to diamond. (translation by Gracia Grindal)

Perhaps the only way we can build the song with precious stones is to begin with dust - the burnt remains of the days in which we feel that we did nothing worthwhile, the hours of work where we have made no visible progress or gone backwards, the hurtful or foolish things we have thought, said, and done. “Come, transform their dust to diamond.”

Perhaps the reason such a song, and such singers, will have Connection and be able to sing truth that touches the hearts of those who hear it, is that the listeners likewise are earthen vessels, broken open so that they might receive the grace of God.

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Thursday, July 18

As torrents in summer,
Half-dried in their channels,
Suddenly rise, tho’ the sky is still cloudless,
For rain has been falling
Far off at their fountains;

So hearts that are fainting
Grow full to o’erflowing,
And they that behold it
Marvel, and know not
That God at their fountains
Far off has been raining!
(H. W. Longfellow, set to music by Edward Elgar)

I am “half-dried in my channel.” Year after year I have sought to do the work that is set before me, to make the liturgy and music better than they would be without me, to teach the Story and the Song to young and old. I am worn out. The Eucharistic liturgy for which I provide music every Sunday brings me little joy, little sustenance. It is “always winter, never Christmas,” as Lewis wrote of Narnia.

It was thus that I came to this day, discouraged by my bad singing and wrong notes, as well as my years and decades of work. Not even last night’s RSCM Evensong could touch me.

I came to Thursday Matins, organized by my friend Judith. And I was healed. The officiant was HMB, chorister from our parish, my godchild and student. She gets it, as was clear from her careful leadership of the Office. As do many others here this week, old and young. And I have been a small part of that for some of them.

This was also the day for the Course’s celebration of the Holy Eucharist. I have almost stopped taking communion at home. But here, there was dignity in the unaltered Rite Two liturgical text, a proper metal chalice (not pottery, such as we use at home). Music: a psalm and anthem.

Most of all, there was joy.

I joined the line of tenors going up to the front. The Body of Christ. The Cup of Salvation, administered by a friend. The prayers. The sending forth. Then midday meal with my friends the adults of the Course.

I had thought this Course might be my last. But on this day I know that I still belong here.

Rehearsals were more relaxed today, the music beginning to fall into place. The young folk had “water activities” as it said on the information sheet, a part of the week that is awaited with high anticipation.

And there was Evensong, the last of the midweek services, this time a full run-through of Saturday night’s music. I was no longer indifferent to it.

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Of the rest of the week, I need say little. It was very good. Some of the singing at Saturday’s evensong was among the best we have done at a Course, with strong Connection. On Sunday we sang at the Basilica as we have done for some years, this time from the rear gallery. I am told by a trustworthy listener that we sounded “guarded,” and I am inclined to agree. We sang well, but it was hard to connect with a congregation that we could not see. Should we remain in this setting next year, we must find a way to overcome this. But the acoustic placement in the gallery is better, we are not so cramped in, and we have chairs – in the front, we were always crammed onto risers, standing for most of the service. Not in the back; there is enough space for a choir three times our size.

And we are done. I congratulate Michael Velting, our music director for the week, especially noting the manner in which he put the hardest work at the beginning, emphasizing the Preces and Responses and especially the Lord’s Prayer setting in every rehearsal so that by Friday and Saturday, we were comfortable with them. In the same manner, the French diction for the Fauré benefited from an early start and many repetitions. More than that, I admire the manner in which he respected the choristers, expecting the best from them but always treating them with kindness.

The organist for the week, Nick Quardokus, is at this writing in the process of moving to New York City, where he begins work in August as assistant organist of St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue. I encourage you to check him out on YouTube, where I have joined his nine subscribers.

Here is his playing of the Bach chorale Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend (BWV 655), a trio that I dearly love and have played several times for church, never as well as he does here.

After the evensong, I told him that I don’t like most of the organ playing I hear. “Most of it has no Connection,” I said. “But you do.”

May it ever be so. And I hope that he posts more of his work on YouTube.

Soli Deo gloria.

P.S. - I poked around a bit more on YouTube and found this:
Duruflé Requiem, with Nicholas at the organ - and it is my RSCM friend Kristin Lensch and her choir, from Calvary Church, Memphis. What an unexpected delight!

RSCM Report: Part One

Répands sur nous le feu de ta grâce puissante.
Que tout l’enfer fuie au son de ta voix.
Dissipe le sommeil d’une âme languissante,
Qui la conduit à l’oubli de tes lois.

Pour on us the fire of your powerful grace,
That all hell may flee at the sound of your voice;
Banish the slumber of a weary soul,
That brings forgetfulness of your laws.
(Jean Racine, from Cantique de Jean Racine [G. Fauré])

One of the adult choirmen said to me on the last evening of the RSCM Course: “The trebles were singing the Phos Hilaron [Andrew Walker, a fine setting which we learned during the week], and I prayed ‘Lord, let me do this forever.’ And I got an answer: ‘You already are.’”

We were standing behind the building where the adults were staying, looking out at the trees in the early evening, after the Saturday evensong. Most of the adults had gone out to dinner; the choristers were cleaning up the common room of the building where they were staying and having the award presentation for the week. It was a time for thoughts of eternity, and its presence here and now in the Song.

I began the week wondering whether this would be my last Course. I have watched older singers in other venues make the choral experience all about their own pleasure from singing, sometimes about the food and accommodations and other aspects of their own physical comfort at the expense of others. I pray that I may never be like this in any aspect of my life but most of all in a choir. The RSCM Courses are not about the adults. They are for the choristers.



The Lord’s Day, July 14

Service above Self (Tulsi Gabbard)

In a sense, my Course begins tonight. We are hosting a concert by a semi-professional chamber choir on this, the night before we travel to RSCM. They were bumped from their scheduled venue only a few days ago and desperately needed a place to perform. Given the timing and my desire for a good night’s sleep, I wished it were otherwise.

The choir is highly skilled. It is a group of well-trained young adult singers from this half of the state who rehearse briefly, sing a complex program in multiple cities (three in thirty hours this weekend, ours being the last) and return to their duties until the next time. They clearly enjoy singing together, and the music is polished, beautiful, gorgeous in our good acoustic (which they loved). It was almost too much sound in their fortissimos; I had to hold my ears. Neither they nor I are used to that in this space.

It is after 11 pm by the time I get home, with an early start tomorrow. And it was clearly the right thing to do.

Monday, July 15

We leave home under a clear hot morning sky, driving south into the remnants of a tropical storm working its way up the Mississippi. First come high wispy clouds, growing thicker and lower, then the rain, hardly a mist at first but steady and growing.

After several years at capacity, this time the Course is again small. There are only two boy trebles, only a small handful of adults. There are plenty of teenage choirmen – a row of eleven bass/baritones, only one of them over the age of twenty-five, and four strong teenage tenors. And there are a sufficient number of girl trebles, eight of them from our parish. Seven of these girls are seated in front of me all week; three directly in front in the second row, four more in the front row. The other trebles, boys and girls, are equally strong and committed to the work at hand, but these seven girls are a special delight to me throughout the week, watching them work hard and be leaders.

By the end of vespers, I am exhausted. In my room, I drink tea and write for a few minutes, then lights out.

Tuesday, July 16

But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise. (J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings, a passage from the House of Tom Bombadil)

During the morning’s ATB rehearsal, the rain falls steadily outside, a silver curtain almost like snow, falling with a gentleness unlike a typical summer rain in this part of the country. I think of Frodo, and how this might be my last time for singing intensively in this life. By afternoon and the full rehearsal with trebles, I am glad that it might be so. I become short-tempered in our work on the Preces and Responses, a setting which I do not like. I angrily scribble reminders into my score:

FASTER.
PUSH AHEAD.
PROPEL.
WATCH.
LONG EE, NOT SHORT.

It is a lesson in Humility. And Obedience. For most of the year, I am the organist/choirmaster and it is others who must sing the music I select, and sing it mostly the way I tell them. It is very good for me to be here, on the other side of the podium, missing notes and entrances, increasingly frustrated at my bad vocal production and mistakes.

It proved to be our most difficult rehearsal of the week, laying the groundwork for good singing in the coming days. I should know this, but it was hard to see it on this day.

What saves me is seeing the trebles, especially those seven girls from our parish in front of me, watching their discipline and energy, working hard from beginning to end much better than I.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have relighted the flame within us. (Albert Schweitzer)

“Thank you for teaching us Music,” one of my choristers from the 1980’s scrawled on a postcard in her childish script, with a hand-drawn bit of treble staff and a few notes for illustration. It has been given me to do this work for two generations of boys and girls. “Teach the Story and the Song,” my Credo sheet says, hanging on the side of my computer: “It is a treasure of inestimable value.”

Tuesday is the first of three midweek Choral Evensongs: the responses (which I still dislike), the Andrew Walker setting of the Phos Hilaron, Psalm 121, the Magnificat. Afterward, I walk as in the old days, enjoying the cool of the evening. Ten or fifteen years ago, I might have walked for an hour or more in the darkness, up the road to the highway, for I never much liked going to the adult gatherings in the evenings; my heart was too full from the music and liturgy to be with others.

No longer can I afford such a walk. It is Tuesday, there is a long way to go, and I am still exhausted from the weekend. After a few minutes, I go to my room and straight to bed.

Wednesday, July 17

I speak of retirement with two of my long-time friends, directors at other churches. It is tempting to tell them “Yes, I’ll come back,” and think that in retirement it can be as it has always been. When the time comes, these farewells will be hard.

In the afternoon rehearsal, there are long stretches when I can listen to the trebles and watch them. A farewell to this sound, these young people, may be hardest of all.

By the end of supper, a wall of black clouds towers above the big house (a former private residence with chapel and pipe organ at one end, where we rehearse). The thunderstorm arrives during rehearsal with lightning, thunder, and heavy rain; it continues through evensong. I am not at all Connected, singing poorly in the responses and the Fauré Cantique de Jean Racine, a piece that I hate to sing so badly. The group sings it well enough for this point in the week, but not me. I am emotionally dead, in a service where I am usually deeply moved.

To be continued.

Farewell to a typewriter

The year was about 1987. Larry was running a downtown shop, thinking that he could make a living from computer repairs. He became the authorized dealer and repairman for Commodore computers.

Neither of those ideas worked out. None of us foresaw that people and businesses wouldn’t have their computers repaired; they would trash them as obsolete and buy new ones. Nor was it clear that Commodore, like many others of that era, would soon be driven out of business by Microsoft.

Larry was a genius. If it was possible to repair anything on a computer – even the ones running M$-DOS or Windows – he could do it. But he was on the whole not a great businessman.

Larry persevered, he and his shop growing increasingly decrepit as the years passed. Stuff that might somehow be useful piled on the shelves, and later overflowed onto the floor so that eventually one could barely walk through the store.

I loved his shop and would go in every chance I got. I bought, sold, and traded various items with him, including one – my Lotus SmartSuite software – that I still use every day. One day, I saw the typewriter, sitting in a corner with boxes piled around it.

“What’s that?” I asked. “That,” he said “is a Royal long-carriage manual typewriter, in excellent condition.” He added: “Ten dollars and it’s yours.” He had taken it as partial trade-in from someone buying a computer, because that’s how Larry operated.

And so it came to pass. It was indeed a handsome machine, in its day (circa 1950) a top-of-the-line piece of business equipment. It was smooth and elegant to use, like playing an Aeolian-Skinner or driving an old Cadillac or Lincoln, the kind that had fins on the back. Later, I found a typing table from the same era that fit it perfectly, and I would use the typewriter from time to time for letters on church letterhead, typing addresses on envelopes, and making file folder labels.

But its days were numbered. The stationary store that sold ribbons closed. I bought two in their going-out-of-business sale, and soon became chary of overusing the machine, not sure what I would do when the ribbons ran dry. Larry finally gave up and closed, too.

I have moved it. Twice. It is not a trivial undertaking; the typewriter weighs in at about fifty pounds, the typing table about the same. Not a piece of plastic in the whole thing: heavy, solid steel, made to last.


It passed the “spark joy” test last year when I applied KonMarie methods to everything in my possession. Just looking at it brings memories of a far-distant era. But I have found that once is not enough for the “spark joy” sorting of possessions, not if a move lies in the not-too-distant future. I must cut away more of them, and have done so, disposing of about half of my organ music, another third of my books, and much else. It is not enough to part with everything that fails to spark joy; one must also part with things one loves, increasingly so as the years go by. Ask anyone who has moved from a house to assisted living or a nursing home.

And there was that typewriter. It has sat in the corner of my office, snug under its dust cover, for nigh on twenty years. I do not think that I have used it even once. It has got to go.

If you are uncertain whether to keep it, ask your heart. (Marie Kondo)

I removed the cover, rolled in a sheet of paper, and started typing. The ribbon is a little faint after all these years, but it improved as I got past the part that had been exposed. It works perfectly, and still brings that spark of joy. But as Marie suggests, I asked my heart and got the answer: “It is all right to let it go.”

Today I loaded it in my Prius and took it to the Mennonite thrift shop. The lady receiving donations was delighted; she commented “This is really nice.” I saw a similar machine on eBay for about $130, without the matching typing table and in considerably worse condition. It is my hope that the Mennonites will get some money from it for their good works, and that the machine will find a new home where it will be loved and perhaps used. It would like that, for it was built for hard work, eight hours a day of typing. Keeping a business office going. Writing novels. That sort of thing, not sitting in a corner under a dust cover.

What I have done by moving it twice and keeping it for thirty-plus years is this: I gave it a shelter, keeping it safe from that day in the 1980’s when it was a piece of heavy, obsolete junk to a time when it is now a “vintage” machine, sought by collectors.

Go in peace, my friend. Find a place of honor and bring joy to someone new.

One more week

The RSCM St. Louis Course begins July 15, a week from tomorrow. Here is a YouTube clip from the Course way back in 2010: Kyrie, from Messe Solenelle (L. Vierne)

As you can see from the photo in the second half of the clip, the Course was much smaller in those days. I am proud of the trebles – indeed, of the choristers on all of the parts – for making the big sound needed for the Vierne.

I wish there were more YouTube clips from the Courses. From the few available, I chose this one to give a taste of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis (note especially the reverberation at the end).

As it happens, 2010 was a year when I wrote at length about the Course. Here is a link to the first of eight essays. Some may wish to read them all; just click “newer post” at the bottom of the first, and it will take you to the second and right on through. I will quote from the eighth and last:

Among the young people (and sometimes those not so young), there are always many tears at the final Evensong on Sunday, and the ensuing farewells, the Course completed. It is right that it be so, for we do not know when or if we will meet again in this mortal life. Every year, some old friends are missing. The day will eventually come when we will be the ones missing, or when the Course is no more.

It occurs to me that I have probably attended more Courses than any but a handful of people. I began taking boys to Belmont Abbey and girls to Atlanta back in the mid-80's, and have been either there or at the St. Louis course almost every year since. The Belmont Abbey and Atlanta Courses no longer exist, though some of the principals from those days are active in other Courses. The boys and girls from those days are now adults, many of them with children of their own. I very much doubt that I will see any of them again in this life….

As I have said several times in these pages, there is a special bond between those of us who have sung at these Courses, all the more so when we have sung together for a number of years. I believe that such bonds, and the similar bonds one has with others in this life, sometimes people we encounter only for a brief time, are a manifestation of the Communion of Saints which we affirm in the Creed. I can easily think of a score of choristers and directors with whom I have sung who have since passed out of this life, and I miss them, sometimes very much. Once, they were young; they learned to sing in the company of those of the generation before them and in turn they taught us, directly or by example. We are bound as choristers into a seamless web across the generations.

We will see one another again, in this life or the next. We will sing again with one another, and the years apart shall be as yesterday when it is past.